obituary transcript

BONNIE WILD is dead. Bonnie Wild, the somewhat disheveled matriarch of a long-time River Valley Family, was known for her low-key, boring, dinner parties that she held for her friends, the Gables, the Crawfords, the Smiths, the Joneses. She died of natural causes. The family thought she’d linger on forever, the way she was so unassuming. She was 96 years old when she died. Her death was confirmed by her son Andrew. She was the widow of Jerry Wild, who had the old parts shop. He produced some of the race cars that ran around the Hartford racetrack in the 1960s and ’70s. He really didn’t have much success. Bonnie Wild was celebrated for the parties they would have on Sundays after the races. She would set her friends around the dinner table and serve them kind-of-over-cooked pot roast and potatoes that tasted of the water in which they were boiled. “She was so unpretentious,” said her friend Billie Frye, “but she still had some sort of style about her. She had a black sense of humor and a knack for setting people at ease. It was liquor.” Bonnie Wild had certain rules for dinner parties. If the invitation was for 7:30, dinner was promptly served at 9:00, if you were lucky. She resented fussy people by just sticking the appetizers out there and saying. “Eat ’em.” Most people thought it’d be more fun watching the goats eat oats than to attend one of Bonnie Wild’s dinner parties. Bonnie Wild is dead at the age of 96.